First Lines: William Kennedy

That year an ill wind blew over the city and threatened to destroy flowerpots, family fortunes, reputations, true love, and several types of virtue.

Roscoe

William Kennedy

First Lines: Rudyard Kipiling

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. 

Kim

Rudyard Kipling

First Lines: Franz Kafka

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

First Lines: Nikos Kazantzakis

A cool heavenly breeze took possession of him.

The Last Temptation 

Nikos Kazantzakis

First Lines: Barbara Kingsolver

A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.

Flight Behavior

Barbara Kingsolver

First Lines: Jack Kerouac

Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.

The Dharma Bums

Jack Kerouac

First Lines: Nicole Krauss

When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.

The History of Love

Nicole Krauss

First Lines: Elizabeth Kostova

In 1972 I was sixteen - young, my father said, to be traveling with him on his diplomatic missions.

The Historian

Elizabeth Kostova

First Lines: Stephen King

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

It

Stephen King

First Lines: Jack Kerouac

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.  With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. 

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

First Lines: Jack Kerouac

All right, wifey, maybe I'm a big pain in the you-know-what but after I've given you a recitation of the troubles I had to go through to make good in America between 1935 and more or less now, 1967, and although I also know everybody in the world's had his own troubles, you'll understand that my particular form of anguish came from being too sensitive to all the lunkheads I had to deal with just so I could get to be a high school football star, a college student pouring coffee and washing dishes and scrimmaging till dark and reading Homer's Iliad in three days all at the same time, and God help me, a WRITER whose very “success,” far from being a happy triumph as of old, was the sign of doom Himself.

Vanity of Duluoz

Jack Kerouac

First Lines: William Kennedy

Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods. The truck was suddenly surrounded by fields of monuments and cenotaphs of kindred design and striking size, all guarding the privileged dead.

Ironweed

William Kennedy

First Lines: Stephen King

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

Stephen King

First Lines: Jack Kerouac

The other night I had a dream that I was sitting on the sidewalk on Moody Street, Pawtucketville, Lowell, Mass., with a pencil and paper in my hand saying to myself "Describe the wrinkly tar of this sidewalk, also the iron pickets of Textile Institute, or the doorway where Lousy and you and G.J.'s always sittin and dont stop to think of words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better--and let your mind off yourself in this work."

Dr. Sax

Jack Kerouac

First Lines: Rudyard Kipling

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.

The Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling

First Lines: Stephen King

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.

Cujo

Stephen King

First Lines: Stephanie Kallos

It’s so hard to explain what the dead really want.

Sing Them Home

Stephanie Kallos

First Lines: Christopher Koch

There is no way, unless you have unusual self-control, of disguising the expression on your face when you first meet a dwarf.

The Year of Living Dangerously

Christopher Koch

First Lines: Ken Kesey

He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Ken Kesey

First Lines: Franz Kafka

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

The Trial

Franz Kafka